The tradition of including gum with baseball cards started in the late 1930s when the Topps Chewing Gum Company began packaging their baseball card collections inside wax paper wrappers that also contained a piece of chewing gum. This innovative business model helped popularize collecting baseball cards as kids enjoyed both chewing the gum and trading the cards. For over 50 years, nearly every Topps baseball card release came bundled with a stick of gum. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several factors led Topps to phase out including gum with their baseball cards.
One of the major reasons Topps stopped bundling gum was for safety and sanitation purposes. Medical experts determined that leaving gum exposed inside wax paper or plastic wrappers for long periods of time posed a risk of the gum becoming moldy or developing bacteria. There were also concerns that some children may have choked on pieces of dried out gum. Eliminating the gum component helped address these public health issues regarding the long-term freshness and edibility of the gum. Shipping and storing bundled cards and gum packages posed unique challenges in terms of keeping the gum fresh and intact inside the wrappers during long warehouse and distribution cycles. Removing the gum simplified the packaging, manufacturing, and logistical process.
Another key business factor was that baseball card collectors in the late 80s and early 90s were generally older children and adults rather than the younger demographic that originally drove the market. Therefore, the gum incentive was less important to this collector base. Also, revenues from card sales alone were sufficient without needing to bundle gum as a marketing gimmick. Pure collectors were primarily interested in chasing complete sets and chasing rare cards rather than the low-value pieces of gum included. The rise of the memorabilia market blurred the lines between cards being sold purely as collectibles versus kid-friendly confectionery items that also promoted chewing gum. As the baseball card niche matured, the focus shifted from casual chewing gum buyers to serious hobbyists and investors.
At the same time, escalating costs associated with including sealed gum with each individual pack made it impractical and unprofitable for Topps to continue the decade’s long practice. Gum ingredients, packaging, logistics, and child safety regulatory factors collectively increased production expenses substantially per pack when including gum. For Topps, the marginal revenue generated from very low-price gum sales no longer outweighed these rising gum-related costs. Without the gum, profit margins were higher since card sales revenue was maximized as the sole revenue stream per pack.
Collectors at hobby shops and card shows had grown accustomed to buying factory-sealed wax packs without gum and saw the gum itself primarily as a choking hazard debris item cluttering vintage collections across their basements as the decades went by. Younger e-commerce oriented collectors today are even further removed from any nostalgia for those classic Topps cellophane bundles. Thus, demand and attachment to the original gum packaging had substantially faded by the 1990s.
In short, the combination of shifting consumer demographics, rising costs, safety issues, and changing business priorities ultimately led Topps to cease wrapping gum with their baseball card releases. While they have experimented with small licensed gum promotions since then, Topps flagship baseball card sets sold at hobby shops and mass-market retail outlets today do not contain gum. The tradition of bundling cards with gum started over 80 years ago helped define Topps’ brand identity for generations and remain an iconic part of baseball card history, but modern economics and safety standards necessitated moving away from that classic marketing formula. Though the gum era of baseball cards has passed, the popularity of collecting baseball cards themselves continues unabated to this day without the need for included confectionery incentives.